See-Thru: Towards Minimally Obstructive Eye-Controlled Wheelchair Interfaces

Eye-tracking interfaces increase the communication bandwidth between humans and computers when using hands is not possible. For some, eyes are the only available input modality to control and interact with the various devices that enable their independence. The goal of this work is to develop and evaluate an eye-controlled wheelchair navigation interface that minimizes obstruction to the user's field of view by removing the conventional use of a computer screen as a feedback mechanism. We present See-Thru, an eye-tracking interface that provides feedback to the user without a screen while simultaneously providing a clear view of the path ahead. Our prototype is evaluated against a screen-based state of the art interface in a study with three navigation tasks completed by seven power wheelchair users. Our results show that a majority of the participants not only prefer using the See-Thru interface, but perform better at driving tasks when using it. This supports the notion that users favor minimally obstructive interfaces in navigational contexts.